Unity also generates useful '''warnings''' (with a "blue ! icon") e.g. telling you a variable you've declared isn't used anywhere. Striving to write code that never generates warnings is a very useful habit.

Unity also generates useful '''warnings''' (with a "blue ! icon") e.g. telling you a variable you've declared isn't used anywhere. Striving to write code that never generates warnings is a very useful habit.

−

The '''print()''' function will produce messages in the status bar and console. You can also use Log("insert message here"); and Debug.Log("insert message here");

+

The '''print()''' function will produce messages in the status bar and console, but it has been known to fail under certain circumstances. It's better to use Log("insert message here"); or Debug.Log("insert message here");. These do the same thing as print() is supposed to.

'''Debug.Break();''' pauses the game in the editor at that exact point. It's very useful if you want to examine the state of objects when a particular situation occurs (e.g. you're trying to figure out what's going wrong when a particular object collides with another).

'''Debug.Break();''' pauses the game in the editor at that exact point. It's very useful if you want to examine the state of objects when a particular situation occurs (e.g. you're trying to figure out what's going wrong when a particular object collides with another).

Although Unity does not have a conventional "stop, watch, and step" debugger, '''the editing GUI is completely live''' when running projects in the development environment (e.g. instances created at runtime appear in the browsers and you can click on them and look at their internal state).

Although Unity does not have a conventional "stop, watch, and step" debugger, '''the editing GUI is completely live''' when running projects in the development environment (e.g. instances created at runtime appear in the browsers and you can click on them and look at their internal state).

Revision as of 06:16, 28 July 2011

Written by Tonio Loewald (a.k.a. podperson)

Note: this tutorial assumes you know the basics of JavaScript and programming. We're not going to go over all that stuff from scratch. If you don't know anything at all about programming, well ... you should probably get a book oriented at learning to program (DON'T learn JavaScript just so you can learn UnityScript -- they're very different. Learn Java instead if you want to prepare to learn UnityScript), or take a class (or perhaps check this thread). The fundamentals of programming are a major topic in and of themselves.

Unity's "JavaScript" vs. the JavaScript you probably know

It's different

Although Unity's JavaScript tries to follow the ECMAScript standard closely, it varies in many ways from other implementations of JavaScript that are based on the same standard. It is perhaps most similar to Microsoft's JScript, especially in that both are .NET languages. However, Unity's version was developed independently and there are a number of differences between the two.

It's fast

Unity JavaScript is compiled (and fast, which is excellent) but not so dynamic as JavaScript in browsers (which is interpreted).

Seriously, there is no speed difference between JavaScript, C#, and Boo (in Unity, that is). There are other pros and cons to each, but not speed.

Note: if you've been following recent developments in the browser wars you'll know that this statement is not strictly true. JavaScript is in fact JIT compiled on all modern browsers, and rather impressively fast on some (FireFox, Safari, and Opera). Even so it doesn't support strict typing (even as an option) which is very costly for performance (every time you perform arithmetic operations you need to check what your operands are and convert them if necessary). If the ECMAScript standard is modified (as Adobe has lobbied for) to allow for explicit type declarations, it's possible that appropriately written JavaScript will be able to execute an order of magnitude faster.

Even so, as things stand, "real" JavaScript is still about two orders of magnitude slower than Unity's JavaScript, even on Squirrelfish Extreme.

The var keyword is required

In JavaScript, if you don't use the var keyword when defining a variable, that variable is scoped as a global one.

Strings Are Always Denoted With Double Quotes and Always Interpolated

In Unity, Strings are denoted with double quote '"' characters. Single quotes are not allowed. (This is a very nasty adjustment for long-time JavaScript hackers, where single quotes are more efficient than double -- but it makes sense in Unity because the code is compiled, eliminating the need for strings that don't get preprocessed.)

(Interpolated is just a fancy way of saying "\n" gets converted to a newline, etc.)

<javascript>var a = 'fred'; // works in JavaScript, error in Unity
var b = 'fred\n'; // does NOT convert the \n to a newline character</javascript>

<javascript>var a = "fred"; // good in both Unity and JavaScript, no performance hit in Unity</javascript>

You Must Declare Variables Before Using Them

You must declare variables before using them. You can, and generally should, explicitly declare variables as having types (helps code to run faster, detects some errors at compile-time -- which is excellent, and others at run time -- which is less excellent).

<javascript>a = "fred"; // works in JavaScript, error in Unity</javascript>

<javascript>var a = "fred"; // a is now a string variable containing 'fred'
var b: String; // b is now a string variable, with no assigned value
b = "wilma";
var c; // c is now a dynamically typed variable with no assigned value
c = "barney";
c = 17;</javascript>

a) You can (and often should) explicitly scope variables as private, static, etc.

b) Unity will implicitly type a variable if you assign it a value when you declare it. So:

<javascript>var a = "fred"; // a is now of type String
a = 5; // ERROR! -- a is a String
var b : String = "fred"; // redundant</javascript>

Method (and Class) Names are Generally Capitalized

Method (and class) names are generally capitalized, except when they aren't. (It's confusing.) Basically, Unity's JavaScript is living in a .NET naming convention world (where methods are CamelCase and properties are camelCase), but is also trying to be like JavaScript (which, like C, is strongly biased towards lowercase and camelCase for everything).

e.g. in JavaScript typeof("fred") == 'string', but in Unity the type you write var a: String;

Lots More Types, Two Kinds of Array, No Object Syntax Sugar

JavaScript has, in essence, three types: number, string, and Object (with functions and arrays in essence being Objects). Unity's JavaScript has many more types, including:

Objects, which are NOT interchangeable with arrays, or Arrays (which are somewhat like JavaScript's objects, but not dynamic):
<javascript>var a = new Object(); // works
a.fred = "wilma"; // runtime exception!</javascript>

Unity supports a large number of special case variations of the integer type. In general you'll know if you need them and don't need to worry otherwise.

Unity has many built-in classes (e.g. Vector3):

You'll become familiar with these as you work with Unity, in much the same way you become familiar with the DOM classes as you work with browsers. (Except Unity's classes suck much less than the DOM.)

One of the things that makes Unity a lot of fun to work with is that it uses a very liberal "mixin" strategy for classes. Usually you can "get at" the classes you need very quickly and easily. The most common example is the Transform class which quickly gets you to any associated class that's "attached" to the same object you're dealing with very quickly and easily.

E.g. in a typical behavior you'll have access to a variable named "transform" (referring to the instance of Transform associated with the object to which the behavior is attached). If you need the associated position (a Vector3) it's transform.position; if you need its GameObject it's transform.gameObject. If you need its renderer, it's transform.renderer. And so on. Generally, in Unity if you have one of an object's major properties you can quickly get at all its others.

a) Unity's String class lacks many of the nicer features of JavaScript's strings.

b) Unity's internal arrays are far less flexible than JavaScript's arrays or objects. In general, you'll probably want to use Mono's Array object if you want flexibility, and Unity's internal arrays if you want performance.

Each .js File Implements A Class (By Default)

In general, sticking a bunch of variable and function definitions such as:

var x : int;
function y(){}

Is exactly equivalent to putting something like this in the same file:

<javascript>class Foo extends MonoBehaviour {

var x : int;
function y(){}

}</javascript>

But, you can also declare more than one class in the same file, which is particularly useful where you need utility classes (or "structs") which aren't descended from MonoBehaviour.

e.g.

<javascript>class ButtonState {

var currentState : int;
var offset : Vector2;

}</javascript>

If you do something like declare a subclass of MonoBehaviour in a file with a mismatched name (including different capitalization) you're asking for trouble.

It's important to understand that when you write a behavior script in JavaScript you are actually writing a class implementation, where:

a) The name of the class is the name of the script file (so if it's foo.js you can instance it elsewhere by saying var x = new foo()).

b) Certain "magic" method names will in fact implement event handlers (e.g. Start(), FixedUpdate() etc.). In any event, a function declaration is a method of the class you've written.

c) Code written outside function definitions inside your file are executing in the class's body. Variables declared in it are members of the class.

d) static functions and variables in a class are, in essence, class functions and variables.

This is all FAR more elegant than implementing classes in "real" JavaScript, but also somewhat restrictive ... mostly in a good way (you can't arbitrarily wire objects together the way you can in "real" JavaScript).

For example, if I create a new behavior and name it foo, the file will be named foo.js. Let's suppose foo.js looks like this:
<javascript>public name : String; // when you drag the behavior onto a gameobject, these values will be visible and editable
public age : int; // other scripts which have a reference to this object (e.g. if they're attached to the same object) can see public functions
private favoriteColor : Color; // private members are NOT visible to other scripts, even if they have a reference to this object
public bestFriend : foo; // you can assign a value to bestFriend by dragging a gameObject with an attached copy of the foo behavior to this property. This will give you access to bestFriend's public methods and members
static faction : String; // static properties are visible globally, so another script can look at foo.faction

function Update(){

// this function will be called every frame by Unity, so it's actually an event handler
var t = transform; // transform is a property inherited from the gameObject the behavior is attached to

}

function Bar(){

// this is just a function, if you don't call it yourself, it will never do anything

}

static function FooBar(){

// this is a global function. Other scripts in the same scene can call foo.FooBar();

}</javascript>

Calling Inherited Methods

super() is the inherited constructor, and super is "this" treated as a member of the superclass (so super.foo() calls the superclass's version of foo).

Some Early Versions of Unity Do Not Support switch() or eval()

Some early versions of Unity did not support JavaScript switch() statements, but both Unity 1.6 and Unity 2.0 do.

a) Unity 1.x does not support eval, but Unity 2.x does -- possibly only in the dev environment (?). Doesn't matter -- Don't use eval.

Switch statements do not run on

In real JavaScript, as in C, switch statements run on unless you insert break statements. In Unity each case needs its own break.

<javascript>switch(x){

case 0: // error in Unity, you need a break before the next case
case 1:
// does the same thing for 0 and 1
break;
case 2:
// does something different for 2
break;

}</javascript>

Semicolons Are Not Optional

Semicolons are generally optional in JavaScript (which has some ferocious logic to determine when a statement ends) but very much not optional in Unity.

Using Mono (.NET)

The JavaScript runtime environment makes extensive use of Mono (the open source clone of .NET). In fact, JavaScript is implemented in Boo, which is a language that runs on the Mono virtual machine and compiles to its native code. Many of a typical JavaScript runtime environment (e.g. String and Math libraries) are provided by Mono. You can tell when you're using Mono classes because their capitalization convention is CamelCase for class names (e.g. String) and methods (e.g. Mathf.Sin()) but camelCase for properties vs. JavaScript's which is camelCase for everything.

Finding Class Documentation

When you're looking at the documentation on the go-mono site, be aware that a huge amount of the stuff you're likely to care about lives under Class Library/System.

Using 3rd Party .NET Libraries

3rd Party .NET libraries (e.g. XML-RPC.net) can be used by importing the .dll file as a new asset.

Debugging

Scripting errors will show in Unity as a "red x icon" in the window status bar. Click on the icon to bring up the console, showing a list of errors, which should be both informative and lead you to the line in the script that caused the problem.

Unity also generates useful warnings (with a "blue ! icon") e.g. telling you a variable you've declared isn't used anywhere. Striving to write code that never generates warnings is a very useful habit.

The print() function will produce messages in the status bar and console, but it has been known to fail under certain circumstances. It's better to use Log("insert message here"); or Debug.Log("insert message here");. These do the same thing as print() is supposed to.

Debug.Break(); pauses the game in the editor at that exact point. It's very useful if you want to examine the state of objects when a particular situation occurs (e.g. you're trying to figure out what's going wrong when a particular object collides with another).

Although Unity does not have a conventional "stop, watch, and step" debugger, the editing GUI is completely live when running projects in the development environment (e.g. instances created at runtime appear in the browsers and you can click on them and look at their internal state).